Jeweled Fire

by Sharon Shinn

  For the next ten or fifteen minutes, she drove randomly, still with no destination in mind; her only goal was to put as much distance as possible between herself and the palace. Every time she came to another noisy knot of celebration, she changed course and found a different route. She wasn’t even sure what direction she was headed anymore. Which way was the palace? Which way the sea? If she could find the Little Islands, she might be able to locate Leah, and surely Leah would know a safe place to go. Leah would be able to get a message to Nelson—or even to Darien—or perhaps to some of those Welchin warships hovering just off the coast.

  But would Leah know what had happened to Foley?

  This time, the sob escaped. Corene put a hand against her mouth, trying to push back the cries, but it was no use. Where was he? Had Garameno managed to hurt him, had Lorian and his soldiers dragged Foley down like a criminal? Surely not; surely Foley was too strong, too clever, too alive to danger. Too alive. He had promised Corene he would not leave her alone in a foreign land, he would keep her safe, and he couldn’t do that if he was dead. He wouldn’t betray her that way. He would be faithful to the end of the world itself.

  He was alive, he had to be. As soon as he realized Corene was missing, he would come looking for her. Where could she go that he would be sure to find her?

  The red tower.

  During that adventurous day when they had tried to outrun the palace guards, Foley had said, If we ever get separated . . . go to the tower of fire and I’ll find you there. At the time she hadn’t been able to imagine a reason she would ever leave him behind, but Foley was always thinking in the most drastic terms about what might go wrong. He would outwit Garameno, he would elude Lorian, and he would come to the red tower looking for Corene. She had to meet him there.

  Fortunately, it was never difficult to locate the petals of fire blooming along the horizon, and they were particularly vivid against the midnight sky. Judging by the tower’s location, Corene was farther east than she would have thought, and not as far south. She would need to work her way southwest, tracing an indirect route through the busy streets. But that was better than just driving at random. She backed up the smoker car and made a ninety-degree turn to enter a lane headed more or less in the direction she wanted. The flames waving from the tall tower seemed to be motioning her forward.

  It took another twenty minutes of wrong turns and backtracking before she found herself on a relatively straight path toward her destination. This part of town was blessedly quiet, too, with fewer parties spilling into the street and almost no other traffic to complicate her journey. She felt a sense of relief so strong it was almost euphoria when she finally pulled up in front of the tower. She was here. She was safe. Foley would find her.

  If Foley was still alive.

  He had to be. She had to believe that.

  She climbed out of the smoker car and then just stood there for a minute, wondering what to do next. Wondering what was happening back at the palace. Wondering if the celebrations were still going on throughout Palminera. Here it was eerily quiet, and she could almost believe the whole city had given one collective yawn and curled up to sleep. She stood on tiptoe and peered back the way she’d come, trying to glimpse movement or overhear sounds of reveling.

  Well, of course, if she climbed to the top of the tower she would command a view of the entire city and perhaps she could draw better conclusions about what might be happening. As soon as she had the idea, she thought, I’m too exhausted to make that much effort. Indeed, her whole body felt strained and sore from the mad dash across the palace grounds. But she was also filled with a buzzing energy, an adrenaline-fueled restlessness; she didn’t think she could just stand there, staring blankly into the empty dark, without losing her mind.

  “All right,” she said under her breath, “I’ll climb the stupid tower.”

  The minute she stepped through the cavernous door she heard the quiet hissing sound of gas traveling through the fuel lines. The lighting seemed even dimmer than she remembered, and the stairwell more insubstantial. She gazed at it uncertainly for a moment, noting all the places metal planks had been brought in to reinforce the worn wood. She knew absolutely it was strong enough to bear her weight, but at the moment it looked like it might collapse under the slightest pressure.

  Either climb up there and see or stay down here and fret, she told herself sternly. And because she hated to picture herself as timid and anxious, she strode over to the stairs and determinedly began her ascent.

  The rhythm, the effort, the sense of having a goal all steadied her, and she felt lighter and more sure of herself the higher she went. As before, she felt the heat build to an oppressive intensity the closer she came to the top; the whuffling sound of the whipping fire drowned out her own labored breath.

  Then she was on the uppermost stair—through the opening—standing on the top platform of the tower. Behind its stained-glass petals, the fire leapt and crackled with a manic energy. It knows how wild this day has been for the city it watches over, Corene thought. A ridiculous notion, but she couldn’t shake it. She wondered if the white ghostlight in the northern tower shone even more brightly, more balefully, on this eventful night. She glanced in that direction, to see the moon-colored stone glowing like a fallen star. But maybe it always looked like that.

  Slowly she circled the perimeter, leaning away from the heat of the fire, trailing her hand along the warm metal of the top rail, trying to get her bearings. There—that splash of light and color, full of moving shapes and shadows—that must be the palace. That must be where the celebration was turning into a wake, where the fairgoers became mourners as news spread of Greggorio’s death. And possibly Garameno’s death.

  And possibly Foley’s.

  He’s not dead.

  She stared through the darkness in the direction of the royal residence, willing herself to see faces, bodies, details across the cluttered miles. She couldn’t make out anything, of course. Just those streaks of light that seemed to waver like candle flame—a trick of her own watering eyes, no doubt.

  She shook her head and looked impatiently away, scanning the rest of the city for any indication of excitement. Scattered across the whole grid were smaller clumps of activity, outlined by what she took to be torchlight and gas-fed streetlamps. Even as she watched, a few of those were extinguished, and then a few more. It must be well past midnight, she thought. While some parties would undoubtedly continue till dawn, the more sober, reasonable men and women would be seeking their beds by now, thinking about the workday that would be starting in a few hours.

  The revelers on the wharf didn’t seem ready to call it quits, though. The whole curve of the harbor was lined with lights, some moving, some still. It took Corene a while to realize that the ones in motion came from ships out on the water, where there appeared to be dozens of vessels crowded around the docks. She wondered if this meant the blockade had been lifted or if private citizens had just taken the opportunity to launch barges and fishing boats and carry the celebration out to sea. Indeed, it looked like some kind of special display was happening at the harbor, because she saw gaudy eruptions of fire and caught the echoes of distant booms. It reminded her of the light shows Darien would hold at the Chialto palace on changedays.

  She leaned over the railing, trying to get a better view. Actually, now that she was paying closer attention, the booms didn’t sound so friendly; they reminded her more of cannon fire. And those blasts of light might not be harmless bursts of color, but destructive explosions instead. She could feel the metal of the railing scald her hands, but she clung to it a moment longer, straining to hear, straining to see.

  Below her a voice spoke in a sharp, excited tone, perfectly audible despite her distance from the ground. “There she is! At the top of the tower.”

  Her heart bounded and she shrank back, trying to see down without making herself so visible. How could she have
forgotten that she was prey for some of the night’s hunters? She could make out four or five shapes on the ground below, shadowy and indistinct in the darkness. But she didn’t need a good look to know who they were—guards from the royal palace. Sent by Lorian to retrieve her.

  Or kill her.

  Surely not. She was a princess from an ally nation. Surely no matter how many Malinquese heirs Lorian had eliminated, he wouldn’t dare harm a foreign national. Though he had been perfectly willing to murder Alette, and Alette hadn’t known his terrible secrets. Staring down through the bars of the railing, Corene thought she could see the glint of metal in the soldiers’ hands as they lifted their edged weapons. These men were not here simply to subdue her.

  She backed toward the fiery heart of the tower, her hand at her throat, feeling the heat of the great blaze licking along her neck and scalp. She thought she could hear the sound of boot heels striking against the cobblestones, ringing against the metal of the bottom rungs. She was trapped. Only one way down, and that one blocked with soldiers with nothing but ill intent. She swallowed a sob.

  Two ways down. She remembered the day Alette had leapt to the railing and paused there, ready to fling herself to the ground below. Corene didn’t think she had the nerve to do that—to run to the arms of death even if it chased her from another direction. If she was going to die tonight, she would die fighting.

  How could she fight? She had no weapons. Just her bare hands and the clothes on her body.

  And the fire at her back.

  There was only one way down the tower—but only one way up, too. A soldier had to poke his face through the trapdoor to the platform, and only one man at a time could make it through. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was the only one she had.

  She could hear them now—louder, closer—footsteps clambering up the stairs. She stood tense, frozen, listening, trying to gauge by the echoes how many soldiers were ascending, how far they had made it up the spiral. Two, she thought; halfway—more than halfway.

  She unwound the spangled scarf she had stolen from the careless fairgoer and dropped it at her feet. It was too insubstantial for her current purposes. Then she stripped off her gray jacket, a close-fitting garment of warm, heavy weave. There was a seam down the back that ended with a decorative pleat. She took hold of each half of the pleat and jerked with all her strength, ripping the jacket into two pieces.

  Two weapons.

  She tossed one aside. Then she sidled up to the stained-glass panel, as close to the heat as she could stand, and dangled the other piece into the edge of the fire. The fabric caught almost instantly, a yellow flame climbing up the woven ladder of cloth. Just in time—she heard voices only a few feet away. She spun around to see a soldier’s head pop up through the opening, and he looked straight at her.

  “I’ve got her!” he bawled to someone below.

  She flung the burning jacket right into his face.

  He shrieked and clawed at the flames licking along his skin. Her throw had been lucky or he was badly positioned to defend himself from such an unconventional attack. His own jacket almost immediately caught fire, and his hands were busy beating at the flames, but now his sleeves were burning, and even his hair. The narrow opening kept him trapped in place—he couldn’t pull himself up to roll on the floor, he couldn’t see well enough to drop down to a lower step. He kept shouting and cursing and flailing his arms, and Corene ran over and kicked him repeatedly in the face.

  He collapsed backward then, disappearing down the hole, and she heard more shouts and commotion as his falling body knocked into someone below him. She couldn’t make out what the thuds and clanging might mean—was he tumbling all the way down the stairwell?—but she knew the next soldier would be right behind him. She snatched up the other half of the jacket and thrust it into the fire.

  The second soldier was no smarter than the first. He shoved his head and torso out of the trapdoor, bracing his hands on the platform as if to push himself all the way through. This time, Corene was standing behind him, and she kicked him in the back of the head so hard that his skull smashed against the floor. In the seconds that it took him to recover, she looped the burning jacket around his shoulders, where it instantly caught his own clothes on fire.

  His screams were horrifying to hear, and she backed away from the trapdoor as he writhed and shrieked and tumbled out of view. She could hear the sound of his body knocking against wood and metal as he somersaulted back down the circular stairwell. I did that to him, she thought. I crippled or killed another human being. She had never had to consider how desperately she would behave under extreme circumstances, just exactly what she would do to keep herself alive.

  Apparently she would do anything, no matter how appalling.

  She clenched her fists. And she would do it again, and again, till she burned her last item of clothing or she set the final man on fire. Unfortunately, it was likely she would run out of wardrobe options before she ran out of soldiers. She could undoubtedly rip her trousers in two, but her thin undergarments would go up in flames the minute she dipped them into the fire. Then she would be nude and completely vulnerable to attack from any soldier—any predator—if she didn’t freeze to death as the night air chilled around her.

  I don’t know what to do, she thought.

  Below, there was a sudden burst of noise—raised voices, clashing metal—and she ran around the perimeter of the platform, trying to peer down. Had more soldiers arrived? Were any of them her allies? That was definitely the sound of blade against blade, but it was all too possible the newcomers hadn’t come to rescue her. They could easily be thieves roaming the streets on this night of easy pickings, and the disorganized band of royal soldiers had proved too attractive a target to resist. But the fight had that intense, sustained sound of professionals battling to the death, and Corene felt her hopes start to rise. Maybe Garameno had survived. Maybe he had sent his own troops after her—for undoubtedly Garameno had spent years cultivating palace guards and officers who were loyal only to him. And if Garameno was alive, surely Foley was alive—and Foley, of course, had known where to find Corene on this disastrous night—

  “Foley!” she shouted, not sure if her voice would carry over the clangor of combat. “Foley! I’m up here! At the top!”

  No one answered, unless a renewed frenzy of fighting could be considered an answer. Hoping to get a better view, she gripped the railing more tightly and bent so far over it that she almost tipped herself off the platform. The huge door in the base of the tower admitted a wavering square of light that flowed over the ground, and in that square she could see black silhouettes feinting, parrying, and falling back. It was like watching a shadow show created by the spinning of an enormous lantern, and Corene felt herself grow dizzy from the imagined motion. Another pair of fighters clashed and disengaged, clashed and disengaged, but she couldn’t tell if she should celebrate or despair because she didn’t know who was winning and who was losing. She tightened her grip and leaned over another inch, hoping to make the shadows seem more solid within the bright light.

  It shouldn’t be so bright. The tower’s interior illumination was a tube of faint gaslight that spiraled up the wall, casting only an eerie glow. That deep yellow color was too vibrant, too intense, full of its own shivering shadows—

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  She yanked herself upright and ran to the trapdoor, falling to her knees and thrusting her face through. Heat and color soared up at her, decorated with bits of ash and the smell of roasting wood.

  The stairwell was in flames.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Corene pushed herself to her feet and backed away from the trapdoor as if it were a rabid animal that had suddenly focused its mad eyes on her. This was her fault. She had doomed herself with her own frantic actions. One of the soldiers she set on fire had lain too long against those wooden stairs, and the dry tinder had caug
ht with an eager elation. The great chimney of the tower would pull the blaze upward in a matter of minutes, the fuel of the stairway laying a direct track to Corene. The wooden platform itself was hardened to almost ironlike density, but it wouldn’t resist the siren call of flame for very long. How could it? After centuries of lying so quietly, so tamely, next to the prismed cauldron of fire, it would abandon itself to flame with joyful immolation.

  Corene was about to be burned alive.

  Behind her, she felt the thin barrier of the railing stop her retreat. The metal was even hotter now; she could feel its muted brand through the cloth of her trousers. The air around her was clogging with acrid smoke. Soon it would be almost impossible to breathe.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give herself over to the conflagration. She would turn elay and fling herself into unsupported air; she would become torz and smash into the unforgiving earth. She was a sweela girl but she could not meld herself with fire.

  She turned around and stared down, trying to nerve herself to make the leap.

  “Corene!”

  The voice was so hoarse that at first she didn’t recognize it, but that hardly mattered; clearly someone was here looking for her.

  “I’m on the top of the tower!” she shouted back. “Where are you?”

  “You have to get out! Now!” came the answer.

  Below her. Standing in the square of rippling yellow light. The shape of a man she would recognize from any vantage point in the world. “Foley?”

  “Yes!”

  “Foley! You’re alive!” For a moment—despite the heat, the peril, the many shocks of the night—she felt herself filled with an almost insane happiness. “I’m so glad! I’m so glad!”

  “Corene, you have to come down—the tower is on fire!”

  Somehow, it didn’t seem so terrible to die if Foley was still alive. It was illogical, but this night wasn’t made for logic. It was as if she could bear anything as long as he survived. There was practically a lilt in her voice as she called back, “Foley, I can’t come down—the tower is on fire!”